**Document:** APL Planning Statement **Application:** 24/00210/C — Change of use from a dance studio to a doggy day care **Decision:** Permitted **Decision Date:** 2024-05-09 **Parish:** Braddan **Document Type:** report / planning_statement **Source:** https://planningportal.im/a/32287-braddan-tregellis-house-change-of-use/documents/1060525 --- # APL Planning Statement ## The Paw Patrol – Tregellis House Plans The Paw Patrol is a well-established business, providing dog owners with doggy daycare since 2018. We have been based on Demesne Road since we incorporated, and our plan to move is timed perfectly with the plans for Demesne Road to become a building site for the next couple of years. We are looking to completely close our current site and move the entire business to Tregellis House. The lane at the side of Tregellis House ends at the back of our current site, we had planning permission approved at our current site in February 2018. Historically, this building was a dance school for 200 students, it was open daytimes, evenings and weekends. Planning permission was granted for 200 children per week to attend with the same parking situation as is in place now, except the children would often need accompanied into the school and would be dropped off and collected in the evenings, which at certain times of the year would be dark. Evenings and weekends is when residents are at home, our clients would need to stop by during the day, when the residents are working, making parking even easier. The Paw Patrol is open 5 days a week, Monday to Friday, from 8am to 6pm. We offer full day sessions (8am-6pm), school days (9am-4pm) & half days (8-1). We currently have permission to open on a Saturday too, but we don’t currently use the option, nor we do foresee it in the future. The team consists of 5 full time staff members (one of whom is me). All staff have had face to face canine CPR & first aid training from Kate Divers, all of us are also extremely knowledgeable within a daycare setting, with over twenty years collective experience. We pride ourselves in offering a mentally stimulating, safe and happy place for dogs to stay whilst their owners are at work. I work on a ratio of 15:1 now, which is far below the UK guidelines of 20:1. Tregellis House is a two-storey building, meaning the noise issue becomes less common because my dogs will be separated, whereas right now they are all together throughout the day. Tregellis House upstairs will hold my small dogs, this area will be cosy, warm, quiet, have beds and sofas to relax on, licky mats, benabones, and a TV on all day for background noise. From my own experience, the smaller dogs are quieter and will rarely bark. This room has the capacity to hold 30 small dogs per day, but we would like to limit it to 25 per day. It will always be staffed with two members. Downstairs will hold our bigger dogs, this will be a more open space, with lots of chew toys, a tunnel, and mental stimulation available. This room will hold 25 large dogs and will be staffed with two of the team. We will work with an in-house radio communication system for staff to communicate between the areas. The ceiling between the downstairs and upstairs is double boarded with ½ inch plasterboard and has fibre insulation. The internal walls were all battened out, plaster boarded and then skimmed. The whole property is doubled glazed, opposed to our current property which is not. The property is a solid stone property, and the walls are around 2 to 2.6 inches solid stone walls. It is worth noting that the open plan areas where the dogs will be are all to the front and roadside of the building. The rear of the property (nearest the houses at the back) are the kitchen downstairs, and a bathroom and the staircase upstairs. Parking on Allan Street is good, much better than my current location (the demolition works opposite, plus the regeneration of the old nurses' home, plus a car garage, a nursery, a convenience store and a car sales garage make parking quite a task). I have taken the time to complete my own surveys of the area at different times of the day, and each time there have been at least three spaces available on Allan Street within the disc zone, alongside the faded double yellow lines directly outside the building which hold two cars. Whilst I appreciate these are faded double yellow lines, they will not be parking their car for any length of time (under a minute) and will never cause obstruction to any junctions. Around 40% of our clients walk to us, many will park in their own personal parking spaces around Douglas and walk to our premises to allow their dog to go to the toilet on the way. We then of course have clients that drive to us, drop their dog in, and drive away, this drop off process takes less than a minute. We have an extremely streamlined process in place for the new premises, which will involve owners coming in the front door, passing us their dog, leaving, and then we take their dog to the relevant room, meaning the customer would be with us less than 30 seconds. 4 of the team walk to work, they all live very close by. I drive in and have already secured a private car parking space on Westmoreland Road that I will pay for and use daily. We are regularly told by people how clean our current daycare is. We power wash the floor when we close every night, there is never an odour coming from our building, nor is there any dog mess within the area. We invest heavily in dog safe cleaning products, and our reception is cleaned twice a day. The new building will have two Karcher Professional SG Steam Cleaners, and the floors will be steam cleaned every evening. Cleanliness is a top priority for us. We currently double bag our waste, then black bag it. We have done this for 6 years without a single complaint about our bins from Douglas City Council. We will have an internal triple door access system including a dual magnetic lock release. This means that no more than one door can be opened at any one time, similar to the 2-man security system in a bank vault. This will ensure full control of dog safety and dog movement. The Paw Patrol is also a part of the wider community. We have a gentleman that has come to us twice a week as a volunteer since we opened, he has additional needs, and the dogs love him. We also bring our dogs to Rebecca House with Easter Eggs, we have visited residential homes, and taken our dogs to have cuddles with dementia patients. We regularly donate to local charities and like to help where we can. I have attached some testimonials for you to read, I feel it will help you understand the kind of business we are, and how happy our clients are with our service. We also have over 50 5* reviews on our Facebook page. I hope this has given you and the team a clear understanding of my business model and has shown the experience we have as a business. We are not going into this as a new business hoping for the best, we are simply moving our current business to a newer and safer location. I also feel moving traffic flow and footfall away from the impending building site on Demesne Road can only be a positive, certainly until the building works are complete. If you require any more information, please do not hesitate to contact me. . --- *Data sourced from the Isle of Man public planning register under the [Isle of Man Open Government Licence](https://www.gov.im/about-this-site/open-government-licence/).* *Canonical page: https://planningportal.im/a/32287-braddan-tregellis-house-change-of-use/documents/1060525*